10-year old from Stanley in half-marathon skate for Mental Health Awareness Week

A 10-year old from Stanley Village has taken to the ice to skate the distance of a half-marathon, doing laps of a Nottinghamshire ice centre as part of a sponsored event to raise money for charity and to mark Mental Health Awareness Week 2026.

Just 18-months ago, Thomas Beardall stepped on to the ice at the Lammas Leisure Centre in Sutton-in-Ashfield for his first ever ice-skating session.

On Thursday 14th May, he returned to complete laps of the rink in aid of the Mental Health Foundation and completed the half-marathon in a time of 1 hour and 36 minutes over a total of 210 laps, skating continuously without a break.

This was after competing in a competition in Bradford on the Tuesday before, where he was awarded the silver medal for his category, as the only boy placed on the podium for the entire competition.

Thomas has been having regular lessons and is now competing in regional competitions. He wants to promote getting more boys into the world of figure skating, at this level, having acknowledged that it is such a female dominated sport.

Proud Mum Victoria described Thomas as: “…a happy little boy and a confident speaker” about his life and hobbies.

“He feels strongly that in some sports gender stereotypes prevent kids having a go at things. Like getting boys into figure skating or getting girls into ice hockey, in the way we see it STILL in this day and age in Ballet for example.

Yet the strongest ice skaters or dancers are often male likewise many women athletes out perform the men particularly with endurance activities. Thomas wants to speak up about it to change people’s perceptions.

“At first Thomas was shy to tell his mates or teachers about figure skating, he was worried they’d think it was a ‘girly’ option and all about Lycra and sequins but the male world of figure skating is strong, with skaters like Ilia Malinin (Thomas’s hero) being the would champion and using the ice to challenge perceptions, doing ‘illegal’ moves like backflips and doing routines to Eminem instead of the usual classical music or even more so using it as a platform to artistically tell his story about mental health. Thomas hopes that one day he can be on world class ice and tell his story too.”